


La Vita di Fame

by just_a_dram



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Courtly Love, F/M, Renaissance, Tumblr: promptsinpanem, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dante’s La Vita Nuova meets the Hunger Games; the unrequited, courtly love of Dante and Beatrice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Vita di Fame

**Author's Note:**

> **Pairing** : Katniss/Peeta  
>  **Rating** : K+  
>  **Summary** : Dante’s La Vita Nuova meets the Hunger Games; the unrequited, courtly love of Dante and Beatrice.  
>  **Author's Note** : Originally written for day one of the the Prompts in Panem AU event, where you replaced a famous couple with Katniss and Peeta. Original posting.

 

**La Vita di Fame**

Nine years I had stood upon the earth, as the stars spun overhead, when I saw her first with my father at my side.  She was not Everdeen’s only daughter, but the only one to catch my eye.  There in her father’s house we came to celebrate spring’s birth, but she was spring itself: all pureness and beauty with her hair neatly tied as befitting her tender years.  The effect she had on me!  I wished to have some token—a cheery yellow flower—to press into her hands, but affixed to the spot, I could only wonder at her.

I felt Love approach from afar, awakening a hunger in my heart.  She was a god come to rule over me.  Love became my master, and commanding me to search her out, I did, contriving ways to see her as she passed by, so that I might look upon her face and imagine happiness.

Those were the thoughts of a child, but what I saw—a rare pearl amongst empty oysters—was real, and the only way I could honor it was by using my humble skills to compose lines that praised her.  My soul became an oven for creation, and I wished to feed her with my love.

Perhaps I brought her some comfort, when composing lines upon her father’s death, my lines circulating as they did in the days following that good man’s death.  He was known as a good father.  I had always admired the friendship between father and daughter, wished for such blessings in mine own life.  She was filled with the most bitter of sorrows when the Lord saw fit to take her father, so that she began to look thin and wasted.  Wanting to save her from the clutch of Death, I knew my love would be rejected, so I composed sonnets, which might feed her soul like bread to the starving, should they reach her grieving ears.

Focused on my craft, I noticed the beauty of other women, but I wrote only of her until Death took a fair companion of hers.  Too young and too good to be taken, I turned my art towards a new subject and composed two sonnets, commanding in one that the Angels sing to her fair companion as she ascended and blaming Death in the other for reaping one so lovely.  It was a tribute to my lady love as much as to her friend.

Nine years passed before we chanced to meet again, though long I had watched and much I had written.  She passed me in the street with her cousin, so linked to her not only by consanguinity but also in appearance and temperament that no one was closer to my love.  I would have hated him for the love she bore him, but in loving her, she made me better, and I could do naught but be glad that he brought her joy.

Though I had rarely heard her speak a word, she deigned to greet me as they passed, perhaps thinking upon the lines I had written for her father or her dear companion, thinking she owed me some small kindness.

Drunk from our meeting, she visited me in my dreams, in a burst of sunset orange light that grew as bright as a nebula.  She was held aloft, naked save for a flaming crimson cloak, in the arms of a powerful man, a lord with hair as white as snow.

“Look upon your heart,” the lord commanded, and I stared at the heart that bloodlessly beat in one of his hands.  I knew it for mine own.  It burned and beat for her, who slept unaware in the lord’s arms.

He roused her from her sleep—though it seemed a shame to do so—and showing her the heart, he used his boundless powers to force her to eat it, though it burned in her hand and she did so with great hesitation.  When she was finished, my dream became nightmare, as she was gathered once more to his chest and ascended into the heavens, leaving me alone, my heart consumed.  I had wanted to nourish her with my love, but not like this.

This dream left me so injured, so frail and debilitated, that my friends could hardly stand to watch my suffering.  Nightmares of her loss became my only companions, and I bled from an unseen wound, left to compose lines in a vain attempt to memorialize her in words, as she moved throughout the world in the company of others.

Twice we met.  Twice we spoke with nine years separating these passing words couched within the game in which some live, some love, and some die.  Sonnets and ballads I wrote for her, and yet, when we met a third time, she did not speak.  By nature a free woman, once forced to feed upon my heart, she could not bring herself to tread that path again, and I was the one left to hunger from afar.

  



End file.
